So mid 2013, my mother decided that she was inviting all seven of us kids and a couple spouses on a trip somewhere. At the time we didn't know we were going to Jamaica but we were all excited for the trip. Eventually over time and with the advise of our travel agent, we landed on Jamaica as a destination. So at this time I should give you a brief rundown of our travel history at the time. The only person in my whole family that had traveled internationally was my oldest sister (I'm the oldest child) who had been to Mexico, but the rest of us had never given travel much of a thought. My immediate family, wife and two late teen daughters had never been anywhere but camping when they were young. So going to Jamaica was exciting because until the trip was brought up, we didn't know we'd be excited about it. And boy were we. Whilst looking for the trip we were going to go on in March of 2014 we had begun finding places all over the planet that prior to then we never considered going to, but now, not only did we want to go to these places, we needed to. Travel had been awakened in us and we hadn't even gone yet.
Upon leaving for the airport, I felt an excitement I didn't think I could feel about something I knew nothing of, but nevertheless there I was just vibrating with excitement and we still had three hours of airport waiting and eight hours of fly time before we were even there, but vibrate I shall. The flight was long and boring, the movie was lame, the seats were awful (sunwing you gotta update your seats Lol) but I don't think I was aware of these thoughts until the way back, I was just focused on getting there.
Landing in Jamaica was "fun". We had a kinda rough landing with a lot of breaking as I'm told Jamaica has a short runway? What ever, I found it exciting lol, and I wasn't the only one. Our youngest daughter is autistic and likes being tossed about so the rough landing prompted he to loudly proclaim he joy with a boisterous yahooooo! Which seemed to help a lot of very stressed out anxious people that now broke out in a lite chuckle at our daughters enjoyment of what was terrifying them. But aside from that, we were on the ground, Jamaican ground. The tunnel from the plain was airconditioned, in hindsight I wish I was conscious of that, as when we hit the door at the end and entered the airport and customs, we were hit with Jamaica heat like a punch from iron Mike Tyson. We were immediately damp coming from cool into hot, it felt weird the extreme change in temperature. But that soon subsided into going through customs, getting to our baggage, then the bus and our hour and a half bus ride to the resort.
Our resort was the Sunset Jamaica Grande in Ocho Rios. The resort looked really nice and relaxing and we were ready to hit it hard, but firstly eat, then sleep lol. The staff was lovely and every whim we desired was delivered in a prompt manner. The view from our room was lovely and the maid staff kept it nice and neat for us the entire week. I would talk more about the hotel and its inner workings more, but after we left it was bought by another company and gutted and revamped s far as we've sadly heard. So anything I would say about the experience at the hotel was made immediately outdated. But the whole experience was delightful, and I'm assuming the beach hasn't changed, and that was beautiful.
The bobsled ride and ziplining at this establishment were fantastically fun, granted I've never done either before so you may not be able to trust my judgement lol. But I love speed and seemingly dangerous things and these two things gave me the feeling of danger even though I knew I was perfectly safe. The jungle bobsled ride was awesome, going full throttle was amazing, and I don't understand why you would go slower. Some of the turns were pretty high velocity turns and made this guy pretty happy. The ziplining was a lot of fun as well, especially the platform that we did a vertical drop on the rope, nerve racking for most, was splendidly exhilarating as a twenty-ish foot drop can be. There was quite a few transitions throughout the adventure and the longest run was a good distance, which in the middle gave you an amazing view of the ocean from the jungle. Awesome is all I can say about that. They also had a pool with a waterslide and whirlpool at the end that you could hang out in whilst waiting. We also took a jungle tour where the guide told us about all the plants that people there had used for medicine and alcohol over the centuries, very informative and a lovely look into the jungle with little effort.
All in all, our trip here was very nice and my only complaint was that the zipline groups took quite a while to be suited up and taken away. So we waited in the hot Jamaican sun for an hour or so just waiting, but like I said, in the end I would say it was still worth it.
we purchased the dolphin swim excursion from our hotel rep, and all in all we had a great time. The dolphin swim was great, the Dolphins were fun, the trainers were helpful and the whole experience was very ooh la la. The only downside was that everywhere you turned someone was asking for more money, not that that isn't everywhere when you're travelling but everything they were asking money for was so expensive for what it was. The pictures while great weren't worth what they were asking, even though this was our first encounter with dolphins we walked away without any photos. But the only regret I had was not paying to have the shark encounter, whilst with vegetarian sharks, they were still quite large and still very shark like, so a cool photo op I regrettably missed out on. But like I said, all in all a great time.
margaritaville was a stop on our trip, cause who doesn't want to have a drink at margaritaville? The service was very nice, pretty fast and she genuinely seem to care how we felt.got free margaritaville glasses with our drinks, which was cool, free souvenirs are always a bonus. The burgers were pretty good, not he best I've ever had, but I've had a lot of burgers lol, these were definitely bette than most though. I really liked the ocean feel to the restaurant, what with the open backside of the building and the sail your boat right up to the restaurants feel was pretty nice, right out of song like. All in all I was pleased with my visit to Jimmy Buffets Margaritaville in Ocho Rios Jamaica.
We did the zip lines, bobsleds, Dolphins etc etc, but when it came down to it, the blue hole was by far the best. When we got there, and it was just the lower hole, that ever was jumping of the ledge and ropeswing, that was great and well worth the ten bucks a head we paid to go there , but when they came and gathered the physically able of our group to go further up, it got way more worth it. The path to where we would end up was fairly long and crisscrosses the river a couple times before we get to it. The waterfall. I don't know what was cooler about the waterfall, whether it was the small hole/tunnel in the side of the rocks the waterfall goes over that you gotta climb down into that takes you into the rock and plops you down behind the waterfall, or jumping off said waterfall? It was pretty cool, and this added feature made the blue hole excursion the best we had in Jamaica.
Jamaica was a blast, there wasn't anyone in our group of eleven that doesn't pine about going back, it was so wonderful. The wife and I will definitely return one day, we just wanna see a few more places first.
